


Every Open Door

by sanidine



Category: WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Blood, Fluff, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mild Gore, Post-World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-16 15:07:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9277370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanidine/pseuds/sanidine
Summary: 1921. Rhyno hasn't been anything other than a pair of quick fists and a willing trigger finger for a long time, and Heath is more civil than could rightfully be expected of a man who’s had a bleeding stranger show up unannounced in his home





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My research for this consists entirely of watching, like, five episodes of Boardwalk Empire two years ago and also endlessly yelling at RobinTrigue. So if anything doesn't check out, that's because I have no idea what I'm talking about!

The harvest moon had been low and swollen when they had gone into the warehouse on the southern outskirts of St. Paul, but it was high in the sky, pale like a blind white eye, when Rhyno staggered out of the narrow double doors. It had been the fire that had woken Rhyno, the cracking and hissing as the timbers caught and kindled. He had come to on the packed dirt floor, staring into Tommy's vacant eyes, and then he had stood up and seen that everyone else was bodies and he was about to be one too if he didn't get out of there.

The Model T that they had come in was still sitting in the gravel lot and Rhyno sat down hard against the running board of the Roadster, taking deep desperate breath of the cool night air, coughing violently. The back of his throat was raw and hot and his skull was pounding like it was fit to burst. Rhyno knew he must have been hit pretty hard from the way it felt like the world was caving in around him, but he couldn't remember who had cracked him over the head. Probably the same person who had shot him.

Now that he was safe outside and still sucking air, though not through either of the bullet holes, thank God, Rhyno knew that he still couldn't stop to think too hard or try to figure out what exactly had gone wrong. Orange tongues of flame were licking from the roof up to the sky, grey smoke billowing from the few small windows, and Rhyno could feel the heat of it on his face even from a distance. He had to get out of there soon, before whatever rinky dink rural fire department it was that had jurisdiction on this warehouse showed up - Rhyno couldn't tell if he could hear distantly wailing sirens already or just the ringing in his own head but he wasn't going to stick around to find out.

So Rhyno got behind the wheel of the car and headed south.

It was the middle of the night and the road was mercifully empty, the bright waxy moon shining down and all the trees going smeary around the edges whenever Rhyno moved his head too fast. He had his wits about him well enough to keep the car on the road but not for much more than that. It felt like he was watching himself behind the wheel from miles away, from back on the floor of the warehouse with the rest of the boys. Like he was already more ash than flesh.

By the time he crossed the bridge that was about twenty miles south of the city, wheels rattling as he passed above the river, Rhyno knew he had to find a place to stop for a while. Soon. He needed to rest and see about maybe doing something about the leaking holes in his side before he passed out and wrapped the Roadster around a tree.

A little ways further on there was gravel track that cut off to the left, and Rhyno turned down it before he could think too hard. He had seen a faint light that way, out of the corner of his eye, followed it like a moth to a flame without really considering what, exactly, he was going to say to whoever was living there. Rhyno had never done well when it came to talking to people, but. One way or another he was going to have to convince them to let Rhyno avail himself to their hospitality.

Twenty yards off the road Rhyno realized that he couldn't hear the engine and he had to stop, put the car in park as he tilted his head back. He sat in the dead silence of the still night, not able to hear anything other than a high nauseating ringing sound that permeated everything, a sound that he remembered very clearly from being shelled. When the eventually ringing faded Rhyno could hear the night sounds again - the buzzing of insects, brush cracking as some animal moved along, the low burr of the car engine as it idled. Only then did he drive on.

It was about a eighty more yards, over a little hill and down the other side, until the driveway ended in front of a farmhouse that had seen better days. There was a light shining out of one of the windows, electric by the looks of it. That was a surprise this far out in the country. But when he knocked on the door it went unanswered.

Rhyno remembered that the polite thing to do would be to take his hat off and reached up for it, having forgotten that he had lost it back in the warehouse. He carded his fingers through his hair instead, pushing it back from where it had been sticking to the sweat on his forehead. It was a hot night and Rhyno couldn't be one hundred percent certain if it was sweat or blood that was dampening the back of his shirt, sticking it to his shoulders under the jacket that he wore, but he thought that it was just sweat. Hoped so, anyways.

Rhyno reached out and knocked on the door again.

That time he didn't have to wait more than a few seconds before the door creaked open to reveal a little boy in a pair of overalls. The kid looked up at Rhyno, seemingly unperturbed by the situation, which. Which was more than Rhyno could say for himself.

“Hello -”  He began, and the boy seemed to light up at being addressed so formally

“Hi!”

“Is. Is your father home?”

“Yep.”

“Can I come in then?”

“Sure!” The boy nodded and stepped back, leaving the door open for Rhyno to follow him in.

“What's your name, mister?”

“Rhyno.”

“Rhyno? What kinda name is that?”

Rhyno paused, shut the door behind himself. He shouldn't have given the kid his alias, the one they had printed in the papers, but it was too late now. Besides, Rhyno could hardly think of himself as Terrance anymore. Terrance was a little boy who had wanted nothing more than to grow up to be a railway engineer, and Rhyno hadn't been Terrance for a long time.

Finally, Rhyno said “It's just my name.”

“Oh.” The boy shrugged, freckled bare shoulders rising and falling under the overall straps. “Oh-kay.”

Good enough, then.

Rhyno stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket, out of place and edging in on exhaustion. The entryway of the house led straight into a dusty parlor type room with a large circular rag rug on the hardwood floor, a couple of threadbare pieces of furniture and a radio murmuring on an end table, turned down low enough that Rhyno couldn't quite pick out and of the words. There were some wooden toys scattered around, a folded newspaper on one of the couch cushions that had a headline about a factory fire in Minneapolis.

“This is where we live!” The little boy said helpfully. “Me and Dad and Willie and Teddy and Grace and Hazel. She's the littlest! Yesterday we -”

Rhyno listened for a while, didn't want to be rude and cut the boy off, but he was still relieved when he heard the stairs creaking. When the man coming down saw Rhyno he stopped immediately, going stock still and staring hard, first at the boy and then at Rhyno. Specifically Rhyno’s midsection, and Rhyno looked down too, confused. But he wasn't confused for long.

Rhyno saw right away that by putting his hands in his pockets he had distorted the lines of his jacket and -. He had such an odd build that it was difficult for anything to fit him, much less hang well under any kind of strain. With the fabric pulled to the side like it was, Rhyno could easily see the butt of his revolver sticking out of the shoulder holster on one side. Like he was trying to show it off. Then, on the other, the bright red stain that had crept up his white shirt and under the holster strap.

Damn. Rhyno had forgotten all about his gun, hadn't even thought about it, and now -

“Russell, you go upstairs and check on your sisters.”

When Rhyno looked back up the fella was staring straight into his eyes this time, looking calm and standing very still, which. Which in Rhyno's experience meant that a guy was about to make a mistake and do something rash.

“Dad! This man was on the porch and he says his name is Rhyno and he wanted -”

“Now, Russell.”

Rhyno didn't want this guy to do anything foolish. Rhyno was pretty sure his gun was still loaded, he'd deal with it if he had to, but mostly Rhyno just really, really needed to sit down. As the kid, Russell, scampered around his father and up the creaky stairs, Rhyno very slowly took his hands out of his pockets. He didn't hold them up above his head or anything, this wasn't a stick up. He just kept them down and to his sides, trying to show that he didn't mean anybody and harm, here, just wanted to have a friendly chat.

Too bad Rhyno wasn't real familiar with friendly chats these days.

“Hello.” Rhyno said, finally, and the guy didn't look anywhere near as impressed as his son had earlier. “I'm. Traveling, through this area. And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, I'd like to ask you for a favor.”

\---

The chair in the kitchen creaked under Rhyno’s weight when he settled into it, tried to keep his breathing steady. There weren't any electric lights in this room, just a burning oil lamp that Heath had left on the table with the bucket of water and the rag. He had hesitated to give his name, when Rhyno had asked, but Heath hadn't hesitated at all to bring Rhyno what he asked for and get out of there as quick as possible, hurrying back out of the kitchen before Rhyno could even thank him.

Rhyno couldn't blame him. Heath had been more civil than could rightfully be expected of a man who’d had a bleeding stranger show up unannounced in his home. And, well. Rhyno wouldn't have wanted to stick around and watch himself strip down and deal with the gunshot wounds either.

This wasn't the first time in his life that Rhyno had been shot, but it didn't hurt any less for those past experiences. Rhyno took off the holster and the gun, set them on the table and covered them with his jacket. He figured that it would do better not to have them in plain view as he unbuttoned his shirt, on the off chance Heath might wander back in and get spooked worse than he already was. There were two tears in his jacket, although the blood stain wasn't visible on the outside of the wool - it had been mostly trapped by the slick liner fabric, run down the side and into the waistline of his pants.

(Rhyno had never had much use for fine clothes before Steve Corino had taken him aside. This had been back in Rhyno's early days as an enforcer, and Corino had said “You're gonna seem like a tough guy no matter what, kid. Just look at you! But the trick, see. The trick is to look like a _successful_ tough guy.”

Rhyno had seen Corino slumped against a stack of crates as he had stumbled his way out of the warehouse, next to another body that Rhyno hadn't recognized. A little less than half of Corino’s head had been blown off, but a little less than half was still more than enough.)

The right side of Rhyno’s shirt and undershirt were slicked up and sticky with blood, two almost identical furrows ripped through each layer where the bullets had caught him. Rhyno had to pause to keep from shouting when he stripped the undershirt up over his head, eyes squeezed shut against the pain, and when he opened them again everything looked just a little clearer. Focused. He took three deep swallows straight from the bucket - the water was cleaner than he had been expecting, but he was so thirsty he was almost beyond caring. Then he braced himself and got down to business.

Rhyno wiped away as much of the blood as he could, a little bit at a time, dipping his ruined undershirt in the bucket again and again until it was indistinguishable from any rag. He was careful as he could be when he cleaned around the tender edges of where the bullets had dug through his flesh. But it still hurt like hell. The higher of the two shots had just grazed him, a long furrow cut through his skin, the edges raw and torn along the curve of his ribcage. The second had tunneled through muscle, but it was a clean in and out with two perfect circular holes. Rhyno didn't notice any missing scraps of fabric from his clothing so he figured it would be okay. Getting gut shot would've been a bad way to go.

Now Rhyno just needed to find wherever it was that Heath kept the liquor so that the wounds wouldn't get infected and putrefy. He went through every cabinet and drawer in the kitchen, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake any of the children with his slamming around. Rhyno didn’t find any moonshine, which in and of itself wasn't too concerning - it was possible Heath just had a stash hidden somewhere more discreet, away from curious little hands. It took Rhyno a second to be able to place what was actually bothering him, the fact that the cabinets weren't barren just of liquor but of, well. Pretty much everything.

Rhyno found Heath, sitting on the staircase with a .22 resting across his lap. The one electric lamp in the parlor threw long shadows across Heath's face, where the stretched collar of his shirt was soft and open around his neck. Rhyno looked back down at the rifle.

If he would have been trying to intimidate Heath he probably would have said something about how Heath had better hope his aim was better than the last guys who had shot at Rhyno. But Rhyno didn't want to frighten this man who had helped him, grudging though that help may have been. Rhyno just wasn't sure if he remembered how to be anything other than a pair of quick fists and a willing trigger finger.

“What're you planning on doing with that?”

Heath looked down at the rifle, back up at Rhyno, face grim and determined. He was younger than Rhyno had first assumed, but age didn't always have much to do with marksmanship and, besides, Heath still looked old enough that he might have been in the war.

“You're not goin’ up these stairs.” Heath said, final, as if they'd had an entire argument about it instead of Rhyno having just come into the room.

“Um. Okay.” Rhyno held his ground, didn't step back even though he kind of wanted to. “That's fine.”

“Alright, good.” Heath said, but his one hand still tightened around the stock of the rifle.

“So, uh. Do you have any shine?” Rhyno tilted his head towards his side, the rag that he had held against the holes that the bullets had gouged in the meat of his side, keeping them covered even though the bleeding had pretty much already stopped.

Heath hesitated for a second before he stood up on the stairs. “You go back and wait in the kitchen. I'll bring it to you.”

Rhyno did what he was told and not even two minutes later Heath reappeared, setting down the smallest glass jar of moonshine that Rhyno had ever seen - not a drinking man, then, or not inclined to sharing - and a small sewing kit. Heath's eyes kept wandering down to Rhyno's side, where he was still holding the rag, like he was waiting to see how bad it was. Waiting to see if Rhyno stood any chance of dropping dead in the kitchen after all. When Rhyno pulled the shirt away it stuck a little bit in the tacky blood and he winced, hissed out a breath from between his teeth so that he wouldn't swear.

Heath went a little white and took a step back, putting a hand out against the door frame. But he didn't leave the room again, even as Rhyno set about the grim and painful work of trying to sterilize the bullet holes. It burned like hell, but it was better than going green and rotting from the inside.

“The war ended before I could be shipped out.” Heath said a while later, by way of explanation, when Rhyno was in the process of trying and failing to thread a needle. “I've never seen…”

“Yeah.” Rhyno nodded, “I was over there for. A while. Before the end.”

Heath was quiet again then and Rhyno, not really knowing what else to say to that, clamped his tongue between his teeth as he missed the eye of the needle once more. He hadn't been judging Heath for his squeamishness, had been focused entirely on the end of that damned string, but he still noticed out of the corner of his eye when Heath shifted his weight from side to side, opened his mouth as if to say something and then seemed to think better of it. Rhyno finally got the black thread through only moments before a baby began to cry from somewhere else in the house and Heath disappeared.

Rhyno heard the stairs creak again and realized, belatedly, the reason that Heath had been so determined to keep Rhyno from going upstairs earlier. Oh.

In the end Rhyno had to work the needle with his left hand, holding the wounds pinched shut with his right. He didn't so much feel pain as he punched it through his skin, just the blunt little popping sensation of the flesh giving way to the fine tip of the needle. Rhyno was not a particularly dexterous man under the best of circumstances and the job was poorly done. Nothing to be done about it, though, and is wasn't as if he were worried about having any good looks to lose.

Rhyno was waiting for Heath when Heath came back down the stairs, perched shirtless and awkward on the edge of a couch that may have had a floral print once but was now just shades of faded red and brown.

“For room and board.” Rhyno said as got up, making sure to move careful as the stitches caught and pulled uncomfortably on his side. Rhyno had been holding a roll of money in his hand, and at that he reached it out towards Heath. There was enough there to pay for more than a month of decent lodging in the Cities, and Rhyno hoped that Heath would understand that Rhyno was, in part, buying his silence on the matter. “I'm going to need to stay here for a while. And some. Extra, for the kids. So you all can eat.”

“I can feed my own family.” Heath said, voice tight.

“I'm. Sorry. I know.” Rhyno shuffled his feet, looking away, embarrassed that he had just offended Heath's pride so blatantly. But it was too late to take it back. “I know, I mean. You seem like a really good dad.”

Heath seemed to measure the moment for a long while, even though it couldn't have been more than a few seconds, his eyes skipping between Rhyno's face and the money and the heavy black stitches that were holding him shut. The bills had been in the his jacket at the warehouse, forgotten until Rhyno had been going through his pockets to see what he had, and the soft fabric edges of the bills were stained with red, still a tiny bit damp.

  
In the end, Heath reached out and took them anyways.


	2. Chapter 2

Heath put Rhyno up in his own room that night. It was the only adult sized bed in the house and besides, Heath wasn't planning on sleeping anyway. The other man he had only had enough energy to mumble his thanks before simply collapsing onto the mattress but Heath had stayed awake all night anyways, going back and forth between the three bedrooms upstairs. One eye on the kids and the other on Rhyno. 

The only things that Heath had ever shot were raccoons and possums, and. Heath would do anything to protect his kids. But he desperately hoped it wouldn't come to that. The .22 rifle felt more like a burden than a comfort in his hands and it looked somehow smaller than Rhyno’s stubby, wide barreled revolver.

Before he had fallen asleep, Rhyno had tossed the gun, still in its holster, onto the bed next to him. It had been partially folded under the bright blue jacket that Rhyno had been wearing when he had first shown up in the house, but Heath had eased it out later, one of the many times he had checked in on his new and dangerous houseguest. Heath had looked at the revolver for a while in his hand. That type of thing wasn't made for shooting raccoons. His heart had been kicking in his chest until he put the gun back, terrified and sure that any second Rhyno would wake up and catch him. But nothing of the sort had happened. Heath had just crept back out of the room, and even though hemust have poked his head in the door twenty times after that Rhyno hadn't so much as rolled over all night.

And it had been a very, very long night. Yesterday, when the sun had set, Heath had been responsible for a few acres of vegetables, five children, six chickens, a cow, and a mostly blind horse. Then, overnight, he had added a stranger with a gun and some bullet holes in his side. But Rhyno was barely even the most shocking part of the whole affair, since Heath also now had one hundred and fifty dollars in soft, blood stained bills. 

It was more money than Heath had ever seen in one place, much less held in his own two hands. Heath had counted it. Again and again, fingers shaking while he listened to the soft sleep noises that the kids made as they dreamed, familiar and dear.

Heath had been raised in the church, but he hadn't been a praying man since the Spanish influenza had come and gone. Still, he might have asked a few times in the most desperate recent year for anything that would allow him to keep his kids close, to not have to leave them behind in an orphanage while he tried to find a job that would pay money instead of just vegetables. Heath had been getting by on whatever he could scratch up from selling the family heirlooms, once treasured enough to take onto a ship, and almost all of the furniture in the house that his in-laws had left behind. But it wasn't enough. All that they had left was either too important to sell, if they intended to stay on the farm, or was so worthless that it was better off just being kept. 

Heath didn't think that having some stocky bruiser of a man come into his home to hide from the law was God answering those half hearted prayers. But. They had been answered all the same.

By breakfast the next morning Heath had decided to tell the kids that they were going to have a boarder staying with them for a while. They were familiar enough with the idea from having heard about it on the radio that Heath only had to answer the minimum one hundred questions, each, from Teddy and Grace. Willie had been going through a stage where he didn't like to talk, just chose not to most of the time, but Russell made up for it and kept jumping in to answer questions that Heath knew he didn't actually know the real answers to. According to Russell, Rhyno was a very important businessman from up in the Cities who had his own car and lived alone in a building that was eight stories high and he had come to stay with them because he wanted to learn how chickens worked. Heath didn't correct him, Russell's tall tales were easier and more innocent than the truth, which.

Willie and Grace were both still small enough to share the one chair at the table, between Russell and Teddy on the overturned buckets, but every time Heath looked at it he couldn't help but remember Rhyno sitting there. The dark, raw-looking wounds leaking in his side.

Heath spent the rest of the meal standing at the counter and trying to get Hazel to put the food in her mouth instead of on her face, waiting for Rhyno to come down the stairs. The kids had all wanted to meet Rhyno right away except for Russell, who smugly declared that he had already met Mr. Rhyno because he was the oldest, but Heath could tell that even Russell was excited about the new change in their lives. Great. 

Rhyno still hadn't made an appearance by the time Heath turned the older ones out of the house to start on their chores. Heath was firm when he told them that that they were not under any circumstances to touch the shiny car in the front yard or to sneak upstairs and wake the new boarder with their poking around. Then, with Hazel and Willie happily stacking blocks, Heath went upstairs to poke around. 

If it wouldn't have been for the rise and fall of Rhyno’s chest, Heath would have feared that the man had died - he still hadn't budged from where he had first laid down, mouth slack and open, but breathing silent. Rhyno hadn't been anything other than polite (well, that wasn't entirely true, but he hadn't tried to do any harm to the kids which was what really mattered) but he was still probably a dangerous criminal. Moving quick and quiet as he could, Heath grabbed most of his belongings out of the room. Heath figured he wouldn't be sleeping much while Rhyno was under their roof, but if he did it would be in the girl's room with the rifle on his lap.

Heath remembered later that the shirt Rhyno had been wearing had been soaked through with blood, and after some deliberation he went back in and put one of his own shirts on the bed next to Rhyno. Like everything of Heath’s it was at least three years old, grey and stretched from washing, nothing like the fine clothes that Rhyno had been wearing when he had appeared unexpectedly in the front room. But it was the only one he was sure Hazel hadn't thrown up on in the past two weeks, and besides. 

At least it didn't have any blood stains on it.

Heath waited and waited and waited for Rhyno to wake up or for something to go wrong. He half suspected to see police cars or men with machine guns each time he checked out the window, but there was never anything out there except for the kids and the scratching chickens and the Model T, which stuck out like a sore thumb. It hadn't done much for his already frayed nerves, spending the morning on edge, and he was exhausted down to his bones. He just had to let it go. Heath decided that all he could do was put a plate of food on the wide windowsill next to where Rhyno was sleeping and leave him be. Rhyno would wake up eventually, but until then there was work to be done, always work to be done, too much for him to spend the entire day skulking around like a long tailed cat.

Aside from one incident where he caught Grace pelting rocks at the outhouse while Teddy was inside, the day turned out to be as quiet and uneventful as any other. There were weeds to be pulled and water to be hauled and animals to be fed. There were also a bunch of muddy smudges on the fender of the Model T that looked suspiciously like someone with little hands had tried to erase the signs of their misbehavior, but Heath set his jaw and didn't say anything about it to the kids. They were all still young, so curious, and none of them had ever ridden in a car before, so. He couldn’t really have expected them to leave it alone.

  
If Rhyno had a problem with it when he woke up then, well, he was going to have to deal with Heath.


	3. Chapter 3

The hazy afternoon sun had been slanting through the window the first time that Rhyno woken up. He felt like he had slept for a hundred years even though it couldn’t have been more than half a day and his entire body was stiff and sore, protesting at him as he sat up on the lumpy bed and looked around. Rhyno had been pretty much dead on his feet the night before, hadn’t had enough energy to notice all the exposed wiring or the gaps in the frame where the window was a couple of degrees off from square.There was also a plate and a bowl resting on the windowsill, and Rhyno - suddenly starving - got up very carefully to retrieve them.

Aside from the pull of the stitches on his side the aches weren’t really so bad once he got moving, but it still made him feel like an old man to stand there at the dusty window, dipping the slice of bread into the thin, lukewarm soup, and watch as a couple of kids ran around on the bright green grass in the yard below. Heath was nowhere to be seen, but there was a shirt for him on the bed next to where he had dropped his holster. Rhyno figured that he had better go and track Heath down, maybe have a conversation or say something a little more reassuring than shoving a bunch of money into a guy’s hand. But instead of doing anything of the sort Rhyno had laid down on the bed and gone back to sleep, sliding sideways out of consciousness before he could think to do anything about it.

The second time that Rhyno woke up the world outside the window was dark. He could hear a muffled laugh and a couple of little voices talking on the other side of a wall or maybe through the floor, too distant to make out the words. Rhyno had just enough time to sit up before the door started to creak open, and he moved faster than he would have thought possible to snatch the undershirt and pull it on even though his sore body was screaming at him the whole time.

The shirt was tight as hell around his chest and arms and pretty much everywhere, actually, even with the three buttons at the neck undone but at least he wouldn’t have some little kid staring at the stark black stitches on his side and asking questions that Rhyno didn’t know if he could answer. It turned out not to be a kid but Heath, standing there with the rifle in one hand and another plate with supper. Or - Rhyno glanced over at the windowsill out of the corner of his eye - maybe the same plate.

Heath must have come in the room while he had been sleeping and. God, Rhyno must have been out of it. Rhyno suddenly didn’t know if he should say something, possibly apologize for sleeping the entire day away, but his words failed him as he stared at Heath standing there, cautious and careful and staring right back at Rhyno. But Rhyno was saved from having to come up with anything when Heath said

“I think the kids’ve been playing on your car. Do you mind?” It sure sounded like Heath minded, but Rhyno couldn’t even guess as to why.

“Um. No. That’s fine? Just.” Rhyno said, blinking slow, not sure why the first thing Heath had really wanted to tell him about was the fact that the kids had apparently been messing around the car. It wasn’t even really _his_ car, although he didn’t say as much. “You just shouldn’t drive it into town. I don’t know how hot it’ll be.”

Heath hesitated for a second before nodding. “I told ‘em that you’re a boarder.”

Rhyno caught himself before he nodded, avoided setting off the shocking ache in his neck.  “Ok.”

“Russell got it into his head that you’re some type of businessman from the Cities.”

That was, well. Rhyno guessed that was true, in the loosest sense of the word.

Heath looked tired and tight around the eyes as he set the plate down next to Rhyno on the bed, darted a glance at where Rhyno knew the sewn-shut bullet holes were under the dingy fabric of the shirt. It occurred to Rhyno then that this must’ve been one of Heath’s shirts and he wanted to say something about being sorry for stretching it out but then Heath was gone before he could put the words together.

\---

Rhyno had been in plenty of dangerous or uncomfortable situations in his life and he had learned, time and again, to do what he had to and to not stop to think about anything until later or, preferably, not think about it ever. That the best way to get through anything was to keep his head down and just keep barrelling forward. It was a strategy that had served him well his entire life. But never before in his life had Rhyno been around so many curious children.

They swarmed him pretty much the second that he stepped into the entryway of the kitchen the next morning, the dawn pale and pink through the trees outside the window, four of them in a little red haired gaggle, whispering to each other as they looked up at him.

“I told you he was real.” said Russell, the one that Rhyno recognized from letting him in the first night. He looked like he was probably the oldest of the group, eight or nine, wearing the same pair of overalls that he had been when Rhyno had last seen him. Rhyno stood there, awkward and not sure what exactly he was supposed to do until Heath swept in from where he had been standing at the counter, toddler on his hip, to shoo them back toward the table. But then the floodgates opened.

“My name is Theodore, but you should call me Teddy cause we’re gonna be friends!”

“I’m Grace and that’s Hazel and this is Willie and he doesn’t like to talk so I talk for him.”

“Is your name really Rhyno?”

“Is it true you have ten cars?”

“Is that dad’s shirt?”

“Are you really the governor?”

“What’s it like to live in the city?”

“What’s it like to be a boarder?”

“Have you ever been on a boat?”

“How many cows do you have?”

“Why do you look like that?”

“Um.” Rhyno said, not sure where to start with any of those questions, least of all the last one. He couldn’t remember other children ever being this friendly and talkative in the Catholic Orphan Asylum where he had been raised, outside of Detroit. If fact, Rhyno very clearly remembered having learned the hard way about asking too many questions and his life had been mostly one of taking orders so. Now he had no idea how to react to being asked so many things at once.

He was saved by Heath, again, who put the meager breakfast out on the table and watched Rhyno out of the corner of his eye as he did so. The kids all scrambled for their spots and only then did Rhyno realize that the chair he had sat on before to clean the holes in his side was the only one in the room. It was currently occupied by two of the kids, squished together and ignoring the food as they stared at him with wide eyes. The other two were sitting on buckets and Heath had the littlest girl in a highchair and Rhyno had no idea what he was supposed to, having invaded their routine.

“You gotta give him the chair.” Russell said, low, nudging his sister after he must have picked up on Rhyno’s discomfort.

“What? Why?”

“Cause he’s our guest, dummy.”

“Be nice to your sister.” Heath said, automatic, before he stopped and looked around the cramped little room as if he could make another chair somehow appear out of nowhere “But you should give Mr. Rhyno the chair.”

“Oh. No, that’s-” Rhyno hurried to say before the kids could rearrange themselves. “That’s fine. I can stand.”

“You _are_ our guest.” Heath muttered, voice tight, but before Rhyno could say anything the kids piped up again

“You could sit on the chair and then we could sit on your lap!”

Rhyno thought that he would probably die if that happened. He rubbed at the back of his head, self conscious, and tried not to wince when his fingers brushed against the tender spot where he had been hit.

“It’s really okay.” Rhyno said and then, in what he thought at the time to be a moment of genius, added “People stand to eat all the time in the city, so-”

“Dad, did you hear that?”

“Dad, I wanna stand up to eat too!”

“Like they do in the Cities!”

Heath turned and gave Rhyno a look that made him want to run back up the stairs and hide, or maybe just get in the car right that second and drive away before he could do anything else. Instead he just retreated to stand by the stove while Heath began the process of convincing the kids that they should still sit to eat - firstly because they were not in fact currently in the city and, second, because half of them were too short to really reach the top of the table if they weren’t on the chair. Rhyno had noticed right away that the rifle Heath had carried before was on the counter, or. He had seen the outline of it from under the flour sackcloth that Heath had tried to camouflage it with. Heath had done a good enough job of it, but Rhyno was used to looking for guns and had spotted it right away. Heath probably didn't want his kids thinking they had any reason to be scared or afraid, and Rhyno resolved that he would do what he could to prove that he didn't pose a threat to this family.

Once the matter was settled the older kids seemed to eat faster than even Rhyno did, mostly so that they could keep talking to him. He was standing elbow to elbow with Heath at the counter, chewing slowly as he could to avoid having to say, and shifting guiltily whenever he caught Heath staring at him. Rhyno hadn’t meant to get the kids all riled up like he did and now he didn’t know how to apologize for it so he just kept his mouth shut, chewing, eyes down under the scrutiny.

Rhyno hadn’t really thought too much about what he would do with himself now that he was without a job and on the lam. He didn’t think that he could just sit around all day, but maybe it would be a nice change of pace. Maybe he could read something if Heath had any books laying around. Maybe he could try to figure out what he was going to do now, if he wanted to try and go back to St. Paul or go. Anywhere else, really. But if Rhyno had thought he’d have some quiet time to think then he was sorely mistaken. The kids, it seemed, had already decided his day for him.

When Heath tried to send them out to do their chores they all dug their heels in, insisting that Rhyno go with them, and Heath shot Rhyno a look that Rhyno had no idea how to interpret. He’d always been real bad at reading faces. Rhyno genuinely couldn’t tell if Heath wanted him to stay away with from the kids or go with them and help with their duties, but he had been accused of being standoffish so much in his life that he figured it would be a good thing to show that he was trying to be friendly and was not, in fact, some scary lurking shadow even though the kids didn’t seem afraid of him in the least.

There was still dew on the grass but the day was already starting to heat up as Rhyno was drug across the porch and out into the yard. Grace and Teddy were each holding of his hands as they led him along, and when he glanced back over his shoulder Heath was watching them from the doorway, his mouth set in a thin line. Rhyno tried to take his hands back but the kids weren’t having it and instead of shaking them off forcefully he just relented to their guidance.

“There's the outhouse. And that over there is where the chickens live.” Russell said, pointing to slant roofed little shed. Then he looked up at Rhyno expectantly.

“Okay?” Rhyno said, again not sure what was expected of him

“Grace has gotta go let them out and get the eggs.” Russell explained, nudging his sister into dropping Rhyno’s hand and going about her job. “Have you ever seen a chicken before?”

“Uh-”

“The rooster is mean!” Grace shouted over as she kicked open the hinged door “You gotta look out for his spurs, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Do you wanna see the cow?” Teddy asked, tugging on Rhyno’s hand as the first chickens came strutting out into the daylight.

“What?”

“The cow.”

“That’s where milk comes from.” Russell cut in to explain.

“Oh.” said Rhyno “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

After he had been given the whole tour of the place, Rhyno mostly spent the morning getting slowly sunburned, going red and tender on the back of his neck above the stretched out collar of Heath’s shirt as he helped the kids pull the spiky weeds that had sprouted up in between rows of squash. He was still moving gingerly, sore all over and always careful of his stitches, but it wasn’t like he really had anything better to do. Grace had asked if he wasn’t worried about getting his fancy pants dirty but Rhyno had just looked down at the trousers, the only pair he had anymore, and shrugged. He didn’t think he was going to be going anywhere with a dress code any time soon.

The kids had seemed genuinely thrilled to have him helping, and even if it meant getting drilled with more questions it felt. Good, that they seemed so happy to have him around. It was easy and simple and Rhyno felt like there was a weight that he hadn’t known he was carrying being lifted from his shoulders. Maybe he could stay here for a while, even after Heath had decided his boarding fee had been used up, help out around the place and -. Pulling weeds was great for daydreaming, as it turned out, and Rhyno did his best to shut himself down. Tried not to think too much and just let the children’s’ idle chatter wash over him.

By midday Rhyno had dirt underneath his fingernails and streaked up his forearms and he knew - from the way the kids giggled at him - that there had to be some smudged across his face from where he had tried to wipe the sweat away a couple of times. He felt pretty terrible still, from a fight he could only half remember, but he also sort of felt alright as he waited behind the line of Heath’s children as they washed themselves off at the jack handle of the pump before they went inside for the afternoon meal. Heath had been supervising the process, but when all the kids had finished and scurried inside to eat he stepped between Rhyno and the pump.

“You don’t have to help out.” Heath said, voice low. “I can get the kids to leave you alone.”

“Well, I, uh.” Rhyno hedged “I don’t really like children, but -”

Heath nodded before Rhyno could finish, face shuttered, and turned away towards the house. Rhyno reached out before he could think better of it and stop himself, catching Heath by the arm. One hand a couple of inches above the elbow, not grabbing or holding so much as just touching, and when Heath spun towards him Rhyno pulled his hand back instantly.

“What the -” Heath looked both angry and terrified, and Rhyno wished that he could disappear into the ground knowing that he alone had caused that reaction. Usually when people looked at him with that expression it was because Rhyno was in the line of duty, doing his job, and it stabbed his chest realize that it had become such a part of himself that he could not turn it off.

“Sorry.” Rhyno muttered, took a step back with his hands up, placating. “Sorry, I. Was just going to say that I don’t usually like children, but. Yours are nice.”

Heath relaxed at that, shoulders dropping, and, for the first time since he had shown up that Rhyno could remember, Heath grinned at him. “Really? You think so?”

“Yeah.” Rhyno said. “They’re really great.”

**Author's Note:**

> I always say I'm going to write more and then flake out. So this time I'm saying that I'm 100% done with this and am never touching it again. *cough, cough*
> 
> Kudos and comments are loved! So much! As always I write and edit everything on my phone, so any terrible mistakes are probably due to that. 
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr ](http://www.bingitoff.Tumblr.com)


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